Antediluvian Civilizations: Submerged Ancient Cities

Ivan Petricevic

Even though most scientists will deny it, among the scientific community there has always been that slight possibility pointing towards the existence of the so-called antediluvian civilizations that were destroyed 11,500 years ago due to the sudden and extreme rise in Earths sea levels. Numerous ancient cities have been discovered in the recent years pointing toward a strong possibility of the existence of ancient civilizations and cities like Atlantis.

Worldwide cultures have left written texts that speak of great floods, some of them are the following: Atrahasis (Sumerian myth), the epic of Gilgamesh (Babylonian legend), the Bible (the Hebrews), Shujing (classical Chinese history ), Matsya Purana and Shatapatha Brahmin (Hindu sacred texts dating from the first millennium BC), Plato’s Timaeus and Crizia (Greece) and the Popul Vuh (the Maya civilization), among others.

Bimini underwater street

One of the first cities to be found under the sea was actually discovered in the vicinity of the island of Bimini in the Bahamas. While swimming, in September 1968, Dr. Valentine suddenly saw what he believed was a paved street with huge blocks of rectangular and polygonal shaped stones under water. The stones that make up the construction have lengths up to five meters and are “perfectly” sculpted. Strangely, the underwater stones bare a mysteriously close similarity with the stones found at Sacsayhuaman, the imposing ancient structure located a few kilometers from Cusco, at 3300 meters above the sea level. According to Dr. Valentine and other researchers like underwater archaeologist Robert Marx, believe these underwater structures are clearly artificial and they believe they have originated in the glacial era.

Mysterious submerged streets of the coast of Florida.

In 1969, the crew of the US submarine Aluminaut found another incredible discovery in the vicinity of the coast of Florida. According to reports, they had found the remains of an underwater city 900 meters below the surface. Among mysterious structures, they believe they found a gigantic “avenue” of 20 kilometers in length. According to the crew, traces of aluminum, silicon and magnesium oxide were found.

The submerged monuments of Yonaguni.

One of the most incredible discoveries of underwater structures was made in 1987 in the vicinity of the Yonaguni Island. The oldest of the Ryu Kiu islands in Japan. The Yonaguni monument is a megalithic formation found 40 meters below the surface, that, according to numerous researchers, points towards the existence of and ancient civilization that inhabited the area.

Masaaki Kimura, a marine geologist at the University of Ryu Kyu, has studied the underwater structures for 15 years. According to Kimura these underwater structures are the remains of a 5,000 year old city.
According to the underwater archaeologist Sean Kingsley, the submerged city of Yonaguni would correspond to a pre-Flood era city, when glaciers covered much of the northern hemisphere and the sea level was lower than today.

The submerged city of Khambhat

In 2000, researchers discovered, off the coast of Gujarat in India, mysterious structures that pointed toward the existence of an ancient city on the seabed. In 2001, the discovery was confirmed by the Minister for Science and Technology Murli Manohar Joshi when he officially admitted that it was an underwater city that was destroyed by the great flood. In the same year, the remains of wood and pottery were found in the vicinity of the archaeological site. These findings were carbon-dated. According to the tests, researchers believe the these mysterious underwater ruins are between 13,000 to 31,300 years old. The underwater city of Khambhat is believed to be the oldest underwater city found to date.

The mega city found in the Caribbean

Researchers were performing underwater explorations in the Caribbean Sea, off the coast of Cuba with the help of a robotic submarine in May 2001. What they found at a depth of 600 meters was anything but what they expected to find. An area of over 20 square kilometers covered in structures, pyramids and other manmade buildings. It’s a gigantic underwater complex that according to mainstream archaeology and researchers, does not exist. According to geologist ManuelIturralde, who participated in the research, it is possible that the submerged ruins found belonged to an antediluvian civilization, dating back to 10.000 BC. Images of the ocean floor confirmed the existence of gigantic granite blocks, circular and perpendicular formations. This discovery has led to several theories that propose that theYucatan peninsula was once connected with Cuba with a narrow earth bridge. Researchers from Mexico believe that these underwater remains could be attributed to an ancient civilization like the one that built ancient Teotihuacan.

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Image Source: Wikimedia, Flickr. Pinterest.

Source: http://www.ancient-code.com/antediluvian-civilizations-submerged-ancient-cities/

'A God That Could Be Real' In The Scientific Universe

"God" is a word. If we define it, even subconsciously, as something that cannot exist in our universe, we banish the idea of God from our reality and throw away all possibility of incorporating a potent spiritual metaphor into a truly coherent big picture. But if we take seriously the reliable — and, thus, invaluable — scientific and historical knowledge we now possess, we can redefine God in a radically new and empowering way that expands our thinking and could help motivate and unite us in the dangerous era humanity is entering.

For more than 30 years, I have had a ringside seat to one of the most exciting scientific revolutions of our time, the revolution in cosmology. In the 1970s, the great cosmological mystery was this: If the Big Bang was symmetrical in all directions, why isn't the expanding universe today just a bigger soup of particles? Instead, beautiful spiral and elliptical galaxies are scattered throughout, but not randomly; they lie along invisible filaments, like glitter tossed on lines of glue. Where several big filaments intersect, great clusters of galaxies have formed. Why? What happened to the soup? Where did all this structure come from?

My husband, Joel R. Primack, is one of the creators of the theory of cold dark matter, which answers these questions by telling us that everything astronomers can see — including all the stars, planets and glowing gas clouds in our galaxy, and all the distant galaxies — is less than half of 1 percent of the contents of the universe. The universe turns out to be almost entirely made of two dynamic, invisible presences unknown and undreamed of until the 20th century: dark matter (invisible matter not made of atoms or the parts of atoms) and dark energy (the energy causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate). They have been in competition with each other for billions of years, with dark matter's gravity pulling ordinary (atomic) matter together and dark energy flinging space apart. Their cosmic interaction with ordinary matter has spun the visible galaxies into being and, thus, created the only possible homes for the evolution of planets and life.

Over the decades, as data confirming this story began to trickle — then pour — in from telescopes and satellites, I kept wondering: What does it mean for us humans that we're not living in the universe we thought we were in? Today, astronomers worldwide accept the double dark theory as the modern story of the universe, but they have not answered this question. Someone must.

Does God have to be part of our understanding of the universe? No. But if scientists tell the public that they have to choose between God and science, most people will choose God, which leads to denialism, hostility to science and the profoundly dangerous mental incoherence in modern society that fosters depression and conflict. Meanwhile, many of those who choose science find themselves without any way of thinking that can give them access to their own spiritual potential. What we need is a coherent big picture that is completely consistent with — and even inspired by — science, yet provides an empowering way of rethinking God that provides the human and social benefits without the fantasy. How can we get this?

Science can never tell us with certainty what's true, since there's always the possibility that some future discovery will rule it out. But science can often tell us with certainty what's not true. It can rule out the impossible. Galileo, for example, showed with his telescope that the medieval picture of earth as the center of heavenly crystal spheres could not be true, even though he could not prove that the earth moves around the sun. Whenever scientists produce the evidence that convincingly rules out the impossible, there's no point in arguing. It's over. Grace lies in accepting and recalculating. That's how science moves forward.

What if we thought this way about God? What if we took the evidence of a new cosmic reality seriously and became willing to rule out the impossible? What would be left?

We can have a real God if we let go of what makes it unreal. I am only interested in God if it's real. If it isn't real, there's nothing to talk about. But I don't mean real like a table, or a feeling, or a test score, or a star. Those are real in normal earthbound experience. I mean real in the full scientific picture of our double dark universe, our planet, our biology and our moment in history.

These are characteristics of a God that can't be real:

God existed before the universe.

God created the universe.

God knows everything.

God intends everything that happens.

God can choose to violate the laws of nature.


I explain in my book, A God That Could Be Real, why physically each of these is impossible, but I don't think the scientific readers of this blog need that. The point I want to make here is that this list pretty much agrees with most atheists' reasons for dismissing the existence of God. But this is no place to stop. We've merely stated what God can't be. We haven't considered yet what God could be.

We've all grown up so steeped in some religious tradition or other, whether we've accepted it or rebelled against it, that it's hard to grasp that the chance to redefine God is actually in our hands. But it is, and the way we do it will play a leading role in shaping the future of our planet. To me, this is the key question: Could anything actually exist in this universe that is worthy of being called God? My answer is yes, and in my next blog post I'll explain what I mean by "a God that could be real."

Nancy Ellen Abrams is an author, musician, lawyer and philosopher. Her latest bookA God That Could Be Real, was released in March 2015. You can find her here and on Twitter: @cosmicsociety.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2015/04/23/401643807/a-god-that-could-be-real-in-the-scientific-universe

'Spooky' experiment proves quantum entanglement is real

Andrew Tarantola

Einstein was wrong -- about the quantum mechanical phenomena known as superpositioning and wave form collapse, at least. A team from Australia's Griffith University and Japan's University of Tokyo, have proven that both are tangible phenomena, not simply mathematical paradoxes. See, back when he was still reigning "smartest guy on the planet," Einstein just couldn't wrap his massive intellect around the theory of superpositioning (or as he called it, "spooky action at a distance"). 

That is, a particle in superposition effectively exists in both places at once (not unlike Schroedinger's Cat) until you observe it at either location. At which time the particle you aren't looking at ceases to exist (a process known as wave function collapse). What's more, the disappearing particle seems to know that its twin has been discovered through some mechanism that happens instantly, literally traveling faster than the speed of light -- a clear violation of Einstein's theory of relativity.

In a paper published last week in the journal, Nature Communications, the team split a single photon in half and transmitted it to two separate labs. Upon analysis, they found that the particle not only exists in a superposition state until its observed but that it never showed up in both labs at the same time. According to Einstein's understanding of physics, this simply shouldn't be possible.

Now that the researchers have proven that both superposition and wave function collapse are real, we can begin to apply these phenomena to the next generation of quantum information processing systems. "Usually there are two types of quantum information processing," University of Tokyo professor of applied physics, Akira Furusawa, said in a statement. 

"There's the qubit type, the digital information processing, and there's continuous variable, a sort of analog type of quantum information. We are trying to combine them." And by leveraging the wave function collapse mechanism, researchers may be able to make quantum communications more secure.

Souce: http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/30/spooky-experiment-proves-quantum-entanglement-is-real/

How to Start a Movement: The Egyptian Principle of Ma'at

The Egyptian principle of Ma'at is a level of consciousness that revolves around a formula of Love (the heart) under will (conscious attention). In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the feather of Ma'at is what your heart is weighed against, to see if you are worthy of passing through to "Heaven" or if you are to suffer in "Hell". If your heart is as light as a feather you can pass, otherwise you are condemned to suffering. If you view "Heaven" and "Hell" as abstract concepts, and dimensions of karmic destiny to fulfill - Heaven is ascension to another realm of consciousness, while Hell can be viewed at as another incarnation on planet Earth. 

Earth is a school, where we are taught by experience, and shaped by the programming we receive from what we surround ourselves with. We are born into this world, exactly as we should be, but we are tricked into believing we are to "become" something more, something different than who we really are. The tricks, turns, triumph and tragedy are all merely tests to see how light we can keep our hearts, even during the darkest moments of this reality. There is no permanence, aside from impermanence, and living the Ma'at principle is the preservation of this light.

The principle of complete surrender to the heart, is something that requires practice. For those who are in the midst of this awakening process, the task to remain at a high vibration can be challenging because not all hear the same "music". Ma'at teaches us (what we constantly reiterate) that being is doing, and it is not our job to force others to understand...merely be, suggest, and live your True Will.

Maat Magick: A Guide to Self-Initiation

From Ma'at Magick by Nema: 

"Once you comprehend your True Will and begin to work on it, you'll draw people to you without conscious effort. Some will have interest in action congruent with your own, others will diverge, and still others may oppose you. In all cases, you're obliged to help each one's spiritual evolution, according to individual need. This does not mean that you should do other people's work, or even imply that you could. The most you need to do is teach by example, suggest reading material, and raise as many questions as you answer."

While learning about how powerful you really are, and the true nature of The Universe is the most exciting journey to embark on, and you want to shout it from the rooftops to awaken everyone from their slumber...you must understand the importance of silence, and the power of suggestion. You can't create anyone else's reality aside from your own, and in order to facilitate change, you must live, and provide "gnosis" through suggestion, and inspiration. 

Nobody likes to be told what to do, and while it may be frustrating, you just have to let go of the attachment to other's personal karmic destiny. It's a difficult "dance", but following your own choreography will eventually inspire others to "dance" as well...and the resistance will dissolve in time. 

"The only way to Dance the Mask successfully is to remember that behind the mask there is no dancer, only dance." - Nema

All experience is initiation to a higher or lower realm based off of the lightness of your being. Adversity is the greatest teacher, and feeling good about the contrast will allow you to feel "God". Feeling goodness, is feeling "Godness"...being light, delicate, and airy, but still maintaining the strength to fly, to soar above the Earthly plane is the principle of Ma'at. The "Godness" is the magic, and the Ma'at is the magick (see: "The Difference Between Magic and Magick").


Source: http://www.evolveandascend.com/new-blog-1/2014/12/26/the-egyptian-principle-of-maat

How you can change your life by thinking: The science behind the power of thoughts

Rakhi Chakraborty

When I first came across Christie Marie Sheldon’s talk from Awesomeness Fest on Youtube titled, ‘How to change your frequency to change your reality,’ the skepticism was hard to hold back. While I try to maintain a healthy distance from lifestyle coaches, internet savvy spiritual leaders and self-help gurus of all kind- I am also aware that treating everything to be hogwash keeps me from discovering information that can be genuinely helpful and sometimes, like in this case, even life changing. Though it is best to be wary of many of her projected metrics (love vibrations?), her talk is eye opening in many ways.

Sheldon raises some hard hitting points to being with-ones that if you are willing to be honest with yourself- will make you squirm.

“If you look at the world the way I see it, you will then be tapped into the causal plane where everything can be changed. Because everything you see in the out-picturing of your life really is the effect of your life. And everything that created it was created by all your thoughts, beliefs, ideologies and every judgement you’ve ever made. Those points of you make up your reality. That’s why your life is the way it is.”

"You fool"

To demonstrate her question, “Can you and your energy influence your environment?”, Sheldon cites Dr.  Emoto’s experiment with water crystals. In 1994 Dr. Masaru Emoto conducted an experiment with water to test out a hypothesis about how positive and negative energies affect our environment. He froze bottled water and studied the molecules under a microscope. What he saw were shapeless molecules. Subsequently he froze other bottles of water and labelled them with key phrases: ‘Love and thanks,’, ‘I hate you. You make me sick,’ ‘Joy,’, ‘You fool,’ and purportedly the most powerful of them all- ‘Gratitude.’ These images, posted by Emoto on his website, detail what the water crystals from each label look like after a few hours of refrigeration.

If your gut reaction, like mine, is to scoff then recall these words by Maria Popova, “Critical thinking without hope is cynicism. Hope without critical thinking is naiveté.” So hold on to your judgements, but don’t let it undermine your capacity for wonder. Dr. Emoto, on his website, says, “This world is filled with wonders and mysteries that get more incomprehensible if we try to think of a reason. Except for some of truly basic things, no one disagrees that there are still so many unknowns.

"Gratitude"

Everything is combination of energetic vibration. As vibration resonates, it makes some tangible objects. The photograph of crystals is neither science nor religion. Nevertheless, the world it shows is truth, and there is no doubt that many messages essential to our lives are hidden in it.”

"You disgust me"

Dr. Emoto’s findings have their own share of supporters and critics and you should form your own opinion on the veracity of his claims. Sheldon endorses them wholeheartedly and asks us to think that given the human body is made up of 70 % water, what kind of energies are we transmitting in our own lives when we go are so hard on ourselves for our mistakes (You fool) and judge others constantly. If all this seems like fantasy, then here is some hard science-not to back up Dr. Emoto’s study-but to support the ideas that he is peddling. “New studies reveal a subconscious brain that is far more active, purposeful and independent than previously known. Goals, whether to eat, mate or devour an iced latte, are like neural software programs that can only be run one at a time, and the unconscious is perfectly capable of running the program it chooses,” reports the New York Times regarding arecently concluded Yale research.

Think of yourself as a computer. The windows you browse (your consciousness), the websites you visit, what you tweet, post on Facebook or Instagram and the kind of content you consume informs your thoughts, opinions and perceptions and guide your understanding of the world. But the impressions do not stop happening once you close the tabs and switch off your browser. The programs installed in the machine continue running and it is they which ensure the efficiency of the machine.

"Peace"

The good news here is that you can choose to install what programs you like and remove the ones that are weighing you down and affecting you negatively. The earlier belief was that life is mostly predetermined for us because our temperament, attitude and outlook is influenced by our genetic and molecular makeup- a gift inherited from our parents and the gene pool they come from. It is these factors which influence our thoughts, perceptions and behaviours and ultimately our actions.

But a slew of new research shows that the truth is entirely opposite. Our thoughts, perceptions and judgements directly affect our biology. So the more self-critical and judgemental you are, the more your subconscious will work to convince you of your worthlessness. But if you make a habit of surrounding yourself with positive reminders and vibes, then the same thoughts will direct your actions towards goal orienting behaviour.Though you can’t control how your subconscious directs your actions and perceptions, you can choose what to feed it.

Cellular biologist Bruce Lipton, a leading authority in this field, has this to say: “Your mind will adjust the body’s biology and behaviour to fit with your beliefs. If you’ve been told you’ll die in six months and your mind believes it, you most likely will die in six months. That’s called the nocebo effect, the result of a negative thought, which is the opposite of the placebo effect, where healing is mediated by a positive thought.”

In fact the power of thoughts are allegedly so powerful that they not only affect ourselves but, when harnessed collectively, can change the outcomes of society as a whole. This phenomenon is termed the Maharishi Effect. First published in a paper in 1976, it was reported that when 1% of a community practiced the transcendental meditation program, the crime rate was reduced by 16% on average. In 1960 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founding father of this movement, predicted that one percent of a population practicing transcendental meditation technique would produce measurable improvements in the quality of life for the whole population.

Though not without its share of skeptics and critics (who raise fair points), the Maharishi effect has nevertheless been studied under rigorous scientific methodology and has, for decades now, yielded stunning results which defy human logic.

Dr. Lipton believes that gene activity changes on a daily basis, that the perception of the mind is reflected in the chemistry of the body. Twenty first century science finally proves what Buddhist philosophers and ancient statesmen knew all along- that an individual’s full potential can only be realised when there is complete harmony between the soul and the body.

Sheldon says, “You are a living, perceiving, knowing being who is in a body. As an infinite being, there are two things that will determine your fate- choice and awareness.”

She goes on to state that choice will always overrule. That we have to choose something really powerfully. Then realize all the things that have come up that stand in the way of us carrying out that choice. “Then all you have to do is just clear those blocks one by one in your subconscious.”

Our thoughts affect our reality. If you want to change your reality, you know where to begin.

Source: http://yourstory.com/2015/04/power-of-thoughts/

The Earth is a Sentient Living Organism

Contrary to the common belief that the Earth is simply a dense planet whose only function is a resource for its inhabitants, our planet is in fact a breathing, living organism. When we think of the Earth holistically, as one living entity of its own, instead of the sum of its parts, it takes on a new meaning. Our planet functions as a single organism that maintains conditions necessary for its survival.

James Lovelock published in a book in 1979 providing many useful lessons about the interaction of physical, chemical, geological, and biological processes on Earth.

Throughout history, the concept of Mother Earth has been a part of human culture in one form or another. Everybody has heard of Mother Earth, but have you ever stopped to think who (or what) Mother Earth is?

What is Gaia?

Lovelock defined Gaia as “…a complex entity involving the Earth’s biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet.”

Through Gaia, the Earth sustains a kind of homeostasis, the maintenance of relatively constant conditions.

The truly startling component of the Gaia hypothesis is the idea that the Earth is a single living entity. This idea is certainly not new. James Hutton (1726-1797), the father of geology, once described the Earth as a kind of superorganism. And right before Lovelock, Lewis Thomas, a medical doctor and skilled writer, penned these words in his famous collection of essays, The Lives of a Cell:

“Viewed from the distance of the moon, the astonishing thing about the earth, catching the breath, is that it is alive. The photographs show the dry, pounded surface of the moon in the foreground, dry as an old bone. Aloft, floating free beneath the moist, gleaming, membrane of bright blue sky, is the rising earth, the only exuberant thing in this part of the cosmos. If you could look long enough, you would see the swirling of the great drifts of white cloud, covering and uncovering the half-hidden masses of land. If you had been looking for a very long, geologic time, you could have seen the continents themselves in motion, drifting apart on their crustal plates, held afloat by the fire beneath. It has the organized, self-contained look of a live creature, full of information, marvelously skilled in handling the sun.”

John Nelson illustrated the “Breathing Earth,” (below) which are two animated GIFs he designed to visualize what a year’s worth of Earth’s seasonal transformations look like from outer space. Nelson–a data visualizer, stitched together from NASA’s website 12 cloud-free satellite photographs taken each month over the course of a year. Once the images were put together in a sequence, the mesmerizing animations showed what Nelson describes as “the annual pulse of vegetation and land ice.”



As the climate changes, the planet comes alive. Earth appears to breathe when ice cover grows and melts–in and out, in and out.

White frost radiates out from the top of the globe and creeps south in all directions. It travels through Siberia, Canada, and northern Europe, heading towards the equator located around the circle’s edge, but ends before the top of Africa. The Mediterranean Sea is the visible body of water on the top left hand side, and the Great Lakes make up a small network of dark blue shapes on the land mass to the right.

The Earth acts as a single system – it is a coherent, self-regulated, assemblage of physical, chemical, geological, and biological forces that interact to maintain a unified whole balanced between the input of energy from the sun and the thermal sink of energy into space.

In its most basic configuration, the Earth acts to regulate flows of energy and recycling of materials. The input of energy from the sun occurs at a constant rate and for all practical purposes is unlimited. This energy is captured by the Earth as heat or photosynthetic processes, and returned to space as long-wave radiation. On the other hand, the mass of the Earth, its material possessions, are limited (except for the occasional input of mass provided as meteors strike the planet). Thus, while energy flows through the Earth (sun to Earth to space), matter cycles within the Earth.

The idea of the Earth acting as a single system as put forth in the Gaia hypothesis has stimulated a new awareness of the connectedness of all things on our planet and the impact that man has on global processes. No longer can we think of separate components or parts of the Earth as distinct. No longer can we think of man’s actions in one part of the planet as independent. Everything that happens on the planet – the deforestation/reforestation of trees, the increase/decrease of emissions of carbon dioxide, the removal or planting of croplands – all have an affect on our planet. The most difficult part of this idea is how to qualify these effects, i.e. to determine whether these effects are positive or negative. If the Earth is indeed self-regulating, then it will adjust to the impacts of man. However, as we will see, these adjustments may act to exclude man, much as the introduction of oxygen into the atmosphere by photosynthetic bacteria acted to exclude anaerobic bacteria. This is the crux of the Gaia hypothesis.

One of the early predictions of this hypothesis was that there should be a sulfur compound made by organisms in the oceans that was stable enough against oxidation in water to allow its transfer to the air. Either the sulfur compound itself, or its atmospheric oxidation product, would have to return sulfur from the sea to the land surfaces. The most likely candidate for this role was deemed to be dimethyl sulfide.

Published work done at the University of Maryland by first author Harry Oduro, together with UMD geochemist James Farquhar and marine biologist Kathryn Van Alstyne of Western Washington University, provides a tool for tracing and measuring the movement of sulfur through ocean organisms, the atmosphere and the land in ways that may help prove or disprove the controversial Gaia theory. Their study appears in this week’s Online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The Story of Water by Alick Bartholomew, is another unique publication in that it reflects the author’s deep knowledge of the principles of whole geophysical systems, which helps us understand the Earth as an integrated Gaia system that sustains us. The book begins by describing our usual view of water based on Western science and then deftly moves on to the frontier sciences that embrace water as the source of life in terms of biological systems, quantum energy fields, etheric fields, spirals, vortices, and as a medium for communications and memory. An understanding of these principles can lead to strategies for treating our water in ways that guarantee a sustainable future for humankind.

How Does Gaia Work?

The homeostasis regulated by the Earth is much like the internal maintenance of our own bodies; processes within our body insure a constant temperature, blood pH, electrochemical balance, etc. The inner workings of Gaia, therefore, can be viewed as a study of the physiology of the Earth, where the oceans and rivers are the Earth’s blood, the atmosphere is the Earth’s lungs, the land is the Earth’s bones, and the living organisms are the Earth’s senses. Lovelock calls this the science of geophysiology – the physiology of the Earth (or any other planet).

To understand how the Earth is living, let’s take a look at what defines life. Physicists define life as a system of locally reduced entropy (life is the battle against entropy). Molecular biologists view life as replicating strands of DNA that compete for survival and evolve to optimize their survival in changing surroundings. Physiologists might view life as a biochemical system that us able to use energy from external sources to grow and reproduce. According to Lovelock, the geophysiologist sees life as a system open to the flux of matter and energy but that maintains an internal steady-state.
Beyond the scientific importance of what we have discussed here, we might do well to consider some of the more poetical thoughts of the originator of the theory:

“If Gaia exists, the relationship between her and man, a dominant animal species in the complex living system, and the possibly shifting balance of power between them, are questions of obvious importance… The Gaia hypothesis is for those who like to walk or simply stand and stare, to wonder about the Earth and the life it bears, and to speculate about the consequences of our own presence here. It is an alternative to that pessimistic view which sees nature as a primitive force to be subdued and conquered. It is also an alternative to that equally depressing picture of our planet as a demented spaceship, forever traveling, driverless and purposeless, around an inner circle of the sun.”

The strong Gaia hypothesis states that life creates conditions on Earth to suit itself. Life created the planet Earth, not the other way around. As we explore the solar system and galaxies beyond, it may one day be possible to design an experiment to test whether life indeed manipulates planetary processes for its own purposes or whether life is just an evolutionary processes that occurs in response to changes in the non-living world.

About the Author

Liz Bentley is a graduate in geology, professional photographer and freelance journalist with an acute insight into fossil records and climatology.

Sources: 
nationalgeographic.com
bibliotecapleyades.net
phys.org

Credits: PreventDisease, where this was originally featured.

Breakthroughs In Addiction Treatment Could Pressure Government To Legalize Psychedelics

by Aaron Kase

What would it take to rationalize federal drug policy when it comes to psychedelic substances?
Ayahuasca, psilocybin, LSD, MDMA and ibogaine are relatively safe and bring therapeutic benefits to countless people via clinical trials and personal use. However, they are classified as Schedule I substances under the Controlled Substances Act. This officially labels them drugs with high likelihood of abuse, with no known medical benefits and leaves them strictly prohibited under U.S. law.

However, psychedelics are good for far more than just spiritual journeys and recreational use, and it’s their proven utility in treating pernicious mental disorders that may finally force the government’s hand.

As research continues to pile up showing that psychedelics can be used to effectively treat addiction, PTSD, anxiety and depression where other therapies have failed, Uncle Sam may eventually have little choice but to drop its absolutist policies and grant the substances legal status.

That’s the approach that has worked so far for marijuana. Nearly two decades after California first legalized medical usage of cannabis (in 1996), the federal government has finally acknowledged its benefits and could act soon to remove it from Schedule I.

Momentum is building for a similar track for psychedelics. In February, the New Yorker published a long piece by Michael Pollan detailing both the extraordinary potential of psychedelic therapies and the numerous hurdles that researchers must clear to study them because of federal roadblocks.

A number of other studies are adding to the evidence. For example, ibogaine, a substance derived from a shrub that grows naturally in Africa, has also shown immense promise. Patients have used it to successfully beat addictions, most notably opiate addictions. To legally receive treatment, however, people must travel to Mexico or other countries where ibogaine is still legal.

The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is currently studying the long-term effects of ibogaine on addictions. MAPS already completed an observational study looking at the safety and long term effectiveness of ayahuasca to treat addiction and substance dependence. The encouraging results of the study were published in June 2013 in Current Drug Abuse Reviews.
A host of other studies have shown that psychedelics can help people come to peace with traumatic experiences, quelling suicidal thoughts and relieving depression even after pharmaceutical interventions have failed. MAPS received a green light from the federal government in March to go ahead with a new phase two study using MDMA to help treat anxiety related to potentially fatal diseases.

A common thread is that psychedelics help people come to terms with themselves, and therefore make them more capable of battling their afflictions.

“Addiction and drug abuse have a function which is to escape from stress and difficult emotions like shame, loneliness, fear, guilt or shyness,” Pål-Ørjan Johansen, co-leader of the psychedelic advocate group EmmaSofia, said to Newsweek. “Recently our colleague, Matthew Johnson, completed a pilot study with psilocybin for smoking cessation, also with encouraging results.”

EmmaSofia is currently raising money in a long-term effort to legalize psychedelic treatments for addiction and other ailments. The group was recently featured in an attention-grabbing piece in the Independent, pushing the notion that the substances are as safe as common activities like riding a bike or playing football. Although there are risks involved with taking psychedelics, particularly for people who are using prescription medications or have existing medical conditions, studies have shown that there is no connection between their usage and acquiring mental health disorders.

“Based on extensive human experience, it is generally acknowledged that psychedelics do not elicit addiction or compulsive use and that there is little evidence for an association between psychedelic use and birth defects, chromosome damage, lasting mental illness, or toxic effects to the brain or other body organs,” Teri Krebs, a neuroscientist and EmmaSofia co-leader, wrote in the Lancet Psychiatry Journal. “Although psychedelics can induce temporary confusion and emotional turmoil, hospitalisations and serious injuries are extremely rare. Overall, psychedelics are not particularly dangerous when compared to other common activities.”

Ironically, prohibition actually causes psychedelics to be more dangerous, because they are unregulated and buyers never know when they are getting something with impure additives.
A change in federal policy could correct that problem, and provide safe, legal access to treatment to millions who need it. The path forward to bring psychedelics into the legal mainstream is clear, although the time-line is not.

Souce: http://reset.me/story/breakthroughs-in-addiction-treatment/